Weird how Mormonism teaches that America is the promised land and that the US Constitution is divinely inspired despite the Book of Mormon providing repeated examples of righteous societies with zero separation between church and state.

The Book of Mormon was never meant to be a place for distinctive doctrines. In fact, it was meant to be as familiar to the 19th century as possible, so when people would read it, they would nod along. It would confirm what they already knew was true.

Rather, what the Book of Mormon was meant to do was to give credibility to the idea of an expanded canon.

John Hamer made a very similar point, that the open canon is the unique doctrine, and that by taking the miracles in it too literally (more literally than they were understood by those who wrote the scriptures), modern Mormons close the canon back up again.

It is indeed awesome for Ingrid Ricks and for the MAA. Thanks so much for doing this, chanson. I finally got around to adding the MAA logo and link to my sidebar. Don’t know why I didn’t get around to it sooner!

I’m so psyched for Ingrid, and I’m glad to see so many people participating in the drawing! I’ll have to find a way to randomly select two comments from this post and the review (not including myself — I already have an autographed copy. 😉 ).